MUSKEGON, MI – Douglas Richard Fitzgibbon has been found mentally competent to stand trial on charges he imprisoned and brutally assaulted a “Good Samaritan” Muskegon woman with the intent to murder her in his Bourdon Street home.

Muskegon County 14th Circuit Judge Timothy G. Hicks made that ruling after a court hearing Tuesday. It means Fitzgibbon will be scheduled for trial unless he pleads guilty or no contest.

The 19-year-old Muskegon man is charged with assault with intent to murder, a felony punishable by up to life in prison or any term of years, and unlawful imprisonment, a felony punishable by a maximum of 15 years.

Fitzgibbon is lodged at the Muskegon County Jail in lieu of $1 million cash or surety bond.

Douglas Fitzgibbon

Allison Jensen, 26, in a photo taken before the Aug. 1, 2012, assault.Courtesy

Fitzgibbon is accused of luring the victim into his home, then brutally beating her in his basement and choking her with an electrical cord.

The victim, 26-year-old Baker College student Allison Jensen, voluntarily went public with her harrowing story in an August interview with MLive and the Muskegon Chronicle.

The assault the evening of Aug. 1 included some 30 minutes of punches to her jaw, chest, temple and around her left eye, she said. She was choked by an electrical cord wrapped around her neck and thrown to the ground. She said she thought Fitzgibbon, a stranger to her, was going to kill her.

Jensen, acting as a Good Samaritan, entered Fitzgibbon's home after he told her his grandmother had fallen in the basement and he needed help getting her up because his shoulder was out of place. She drove him to his home after the two met outside Ghezzi’s Market a short distance away and he asked her for help, she said.

The attack in the basement followed, she said.

She said she escaped after eventually managing to persuade Fitzgibbon to go up to the kitchen to get her a glass of water.